Briefing Note – Doug Ford’s Omnibus Health Bill (Bill 74)

Not a Single New Service or Improvement to Care
We have excellent health care. We just don’t have enough of it. Yet Doug Ford’s new health care omnibus bill does not open a single new health care service. Not a single surgery to help tackle wait lists. Not one new nursing home space. No more health professionals, vital support staff, nurses or doctors.

At the same time, Ontario has the fewest hospital beds left of any province in the country and of any developed nation, even while patients wait for days on stretchers for a bed to open up. Every major hospital has operating rooms that are closed due to lack of funding, even while people wait for surgeries. Our province funds our hospitals at the lowest rate in Canada. We also have the second fewest long-term care beds of any province while wait-lists number 33,800. The evidence is clear: cuts and rationing have gone too far. In fact, in the election Mr. Ford traversed the province promising more, not a wholesale dismembering of the health system.